The Ground Zero memorial in Manhattan didn't come together easily. Nor should it have - honoring lives lost is a task never to be taken lightly.

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That said, whether 9/11-related or otherwise, debates about the appropriateness of memorials and their siblings, monuments, abound. Public land use advocates, architects, sculpture critics, commercial interests, political interests, ethnic interests and the friends and families of the deceased are among the groups so often involved in sometimes heated discussions about whether to create a memorial - and then more often than not, a far harder conversation about what sort of memorial is most apt?

Los Angeles brims with memorials and monuments. As Departures makes its way through various City neighborhoods, memorials and monuments likewise become parts of Departures' murals and related contents.

"We have the entire skateboarding community hands-on in this park and we try to give the youth a sense of ownership," Lewis said. "That way they have some civic responsibility. They are not going to wreck the park, if they see someone down here trashing it they are going to ask them not to."

While Agnew's memorial was built, another Venice memorial covered by Departures remains in the planning stages, as it takes the typically slow route forward towards acceptance and then construction.

The proposed Venice Japanese American Memorial Marker aims not to celebrate one person's life and career, a la Agnew's park, but instead to spotlight a particularly ugly event in local, state and U.S. history. As Phyllis Hayashibara explains:

"On April 25, 1942, hundreds of Japanese Americans reported to 933 1/2 Venice Boulevard, near the intersection of Lincoln and Venice Boulevard in response to Civilian Exclusion Order No. 7 which ordered the evacuation of people of Japanese ancestry, 'alien and non-alien' alike, out of the Malibu, Santa Monica, West Los Angeles, and Venice areas. Over the next three days, some 3,000 Japanese Americans lined up at this intersection for the day-long bus ride to the Manzanar War Relocation Authority in the Owens Valley."

Other L.A. memorials and monuments are divided by naming nomenclature. Some go with a person, in the manner of Agnew and the Biddy Mason's Place memorial located behind the Bradbury Building Downtown. The L.A. River Field Guide includes a reference to Montebello's Grant Rea Park, located near the Whittier Narrows.

The Los Angeles State Historic Park is prominent in the Departures: LA River coverage. LASHP is home to signage noting the park-adjacent zanja madre, or mother ditch - the aqueduct that provided the early liquid lifeblood from the River to settlements in what is today Olvera Street. From the State Park, behind a fence, across Gold Line tracks, the zanja madre appears framed by a mass of soft gray concrete - a monument to itself.

LASHP carries an all-but anonymous name, deliberately free from monickers of individuals living or dead. This is a reasonable consensus-building idea considering the community debates that can and often do arise over time regarding the status and stature of named public figures- how many places nationally were named after Christopher Columbus during the 19th century compared to the 20th? How about the 21st?

There are also, of course, memorials more virtual than physical. Longtime Chinatown leader Irvin Lai (1927-2010) passed away July 16, 2010. He is eulogized throughout the Departures: Chinatown series, including in this post, "Memorial and Celebration of Irvin R. Lai."

As summarized here, Lai went from volunteering to join the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II to serving as a field artillery man during the Korean War to coming home to Los Angeles and realizing what freedoms and rights he and others were being denied, and how unjust that was.

Lai became politically active and encouraged others to, as well. Thanks to the work he, and many others, undertook, ethnically restrictive U.S. immigration policy was changed. The nation - from LA.'s Chinatown through the rest of the city and throughout all fifty states - transformed.

The online eulogy of Lai doubled as an announcement of a larger memorial service to be held at a Chinatown Church. The piece, in part, read:

"...Irvin Lai had a significant and enduring impact in fighting for fair and equal opportunities of Chinese Americans in Los Angeles. His heroic contributions to Los Angeles Chinatown that greatly improved educational opportunities, health services, and community safety will be presented."

"We had the chance to speak with Irvin Lai before his death on July 16th, 2010. Although battling cancer, he graciously invited us to his home in Crenshaw to look back at the struggles he had undertaken throughout his life, and the gains that this advocacy for the Chinese American Community in Los Angeles.

"Perhaps most illuminating of all, though, was the poem Lai read to us at the end of the interview. It was written by an unknown Chinese sojourner in the early part of the 20th Century, and it speaks of the contradictory longing of the migrant for home even as he realizes that his new home is now America.

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